The power of music
and friendship
heals dead connections;
a well-meaning member
of a jam session
offers me a guitar.
I politely decline,
embarrassed by my disability,
and they shrug.  Your choice.
The familiar curves
beneath my arm
like a woman
from my past,
my amnesiac left hand
reaches for the
muscle memory
of fifty years' practice.
After an agonizing minute,
the G chord miraculously plays,
as I played it at five,
the three big fingers alone
strong enough to hold it.
The switch to C impossible;
so I play a variation.
Doesn't sound bad with the group.
My God, I might play a D7
by the next time it comes around
in the song.
The gang is playing old standards,
Ohio State music;
three chords and a cloud of dust,
which suits my present skill(?) well.
I almost cried when a few tunes later,
we sang A Horse With No Name
to my accompaniment.

Beethoven was deaf, yet heard the Ode To Joy.
Hawking is paralyzed, and travels the universe.
I have three good fingers,
and no good excuses.

There are secrets I do not tell
even to myself.
They are the same secrets
the cherry bossoms
know when they
proliferate the cherry trees.
Even as they prepare
to fall like confetti.

They are the
babbling secrets
Of  the mountain streams
as thier waters bounce stunned
into the rocks of the rapids.

Hush whispers the librarian
As the rows
and volumes of books.
Keep their dusty secrets
in her silence.

In the garden
The fluted speakers
Of the morning glory.
Sing only silence
Falling asleep
into dreaming nights.

Just about audible
the taunting voices
Of the
whippoorwill

Never tell
Never tell
Never tell.

Bite a strawberry in June and try to tell me you can't taste color.
A quiet lapping sea sloshes pink foam over crunchy sand seeds.
Stare at watercolors--make eye contact and listen to the breeze.
Maybe rustling trees are symphonies in green. Kiss me,
watch my heartbeat pulse and quiver, bubble through my mouth;
racing, hiccuping out heat from my throat’s abyss.
Smell my hair, breathe the sugary bonfire billowing from every pore,
pine needle goosebumps that rise and fall in Redwood symmetry.
I'll visit your grave, dragging a Santa sack of rotting flowers in my brain,
and (pretend I don’t) feel and hear and smell and see everything
and nothing all at once.

The Muse
I remember it well when in the summer evenings
I went to see her we drank wine and made love
Embraced we slept to morning light.
Stay with me she said to rest a bit longer I will serve you tea
No, I wanted to go home savour the night in privacy
Feed the dog, go for a walk and write about my love for her.
It ended like a morning dream; she had found a man who
Drank her tea and stayed with her till he was too old
And she sent him to an old people’s home.
She had been my muse lives in my poems, but no,
I didn't want to stay with her a painter rarely marries his model
But she will always be there hanging in some gallery
Or on the wall in the lobby of some hotel.